


A Contemplation of Starry Skies

by sturmfreii



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 18:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2035044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturmfreii/pseuds/sturmfreii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are an infinite amount of things happening under a starry sky, at all different points in our lives. The stars see just as much as the sun does, and it breathes it all in with the comfort of darkness to cradle these memories. Here is a contemplation of ten memories, all tucked under the star’s arms in remembrance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Contemplation of Starry Skies

**Author's Note:**

> A.N: Written for ph-fanfest on Tumblr, prompt #8. I would highly recommend listening to "I'll Keep You Safe" by Sleeping At Last. I hope you enjoy!

> ** X. **

Stars. An infinite amount of them, all of them sparkling and shimmering against the sky as he breathes in the cold air. It reminds Jack of little particles of dust when disturbed in a sunlit room; they float in space, sparkling and shimmering like golden lights. The stars remind him there is life in darkness, not just the light. Lacie is holding his hand all too tightly, and that mysterious smile is lit up on her face.

"I love stars." she speaks in a voice dripping with peace, with a total content he has yet to see from her, "There are too many to count! They just…they light up the sky, y’know? It reminds you that you aren’t alone at night; not when there’s all those stars up there, staring down at you. It’s all the same at night." Silently, Jack gazes at her, emerald eyes catching the way the moonlight shined her hair and lit up her eyes. No longer were they red, but grey; a color that he realizes makes her seem just like every other human. 

That’s right. Jack lifts his head back to the sky, eyes wide as he breathes deeply. The moon does not discriminate—humans are humans regardless of their skin, of their hair and eyes and colors they wear. In this world, this night time world, they are all black and white. He stands with her, feeling his fingers grown numb with how tightly she’s holding onto his hand. 

Jack loves her in moonlight. 

> **V.**

Cigarette smoke fills the chilly night air. A man walks in silence, his jacket left open as he tucks his hands in his pocket. Old Town’s usual babel of voices and business had simmered down to nothing more than the gust of the wind. Such a silence could only be broken by a human’s breath, a whisper against ice cold lips and harsh footsteps. A man walks in silence, and he finds himself uneasy when someone breaks his silence. 

"You look troubled." a gentle, soft voice wafts up from his right, and the man spots a young woman smiling down at him from a balcony, "It doesn’t suit you." 

The man chuckles, gazing up at the stars as he places the cigarette between his fingers. “Maybe I’m just thinking too hard.” he replies, voice low and without hesitation, “I don’t know, really.” 

Laughter drifts down from the balcony, and the man swears it’s the most sweet thing he’s ever listened to. He closes his eyes, his lips curling into a smile as he tries to let her laugh ring over and over in his mind. Oh, but her voice, that soft and caramel rich voice that drifts down from the balcony—he loves it even more. “Would you like someone to talk to?” she asks, words dripping down with such a natural grace that he is entranced. 

He can’t see her face, it’s shaded just so by the moon’s careful and steady hand in monochrome to hide her true colors from him. “I would, if a pretty lady like you wouldn’t mind.” the man answers her with a small laugh of his own, and he watches as a figure sways on the balcony above. The woman smiles (so he believes—and it strikes him like an arrow to see such beauty!) and suddenly uprights herself, rising from what appeared to be a chair before drifting into a dark house. 

When the door opens, he finds her to be small, short, but just as beautiful as when she sat above him. She’s wrapped in a large coat, skin pale but smile gentle and beautiful in the dim light. “What’s your name then, o wandering stranger?” the woman folds her arms, beginning to walk. 

A smile is flickering over the man’s face. “Richard.” he answers, after a moment’s thought. 

"No. That’s a lie, and you know it." the woman rests a hand on her hip, looking back out at the cobblestone road. 

“ _Eh?_ " 

"That’s not your name. You’re lying—why  _else_  would you hesitate? It’s not like I’ll ever see you again after this. C’mon, tell me—what’s the worst that could happen?” 

He prays, for a silent moment, that he will see her again. With a gentle breath, he parts his lips, lifting the cigarette back up to his lips to give her an answer of smoke. 

"Oscar." 

> **II.**

Darkness stirs; it begins to grow and rise out of the blades of dark grey grass in the light of the moon, and envelopes Liam Lunettes. He sounds so tired, the way he breathes and speaks with such a quiet tone of voice that doesn’t sit well with Xerxes. Equis holds him close to it’s chest, and Sharon has already begun to tend to Liam when the words slip out of Xerxes’ lips—so carelessly, so honestly. 

"Liam…I am glad…you’re alive." 

When the shadows fade, Xerxes is left alone in his own world of perpetual darkness. The night air is cold, and his blood feels sticky against his fingertips. His lungs feel raw as he breathes, his body weak and his soul beginning to sink as relief sets into his system. Liam was alive. On impulse, the man gazes up at the stars above him, and frowns distastefully. 

There aren’t any stars out. Sharon claimed there were, at the beginning of this shitty ceremony…yet he wonders if she was just saying that to make him imagine there was a whole sea of them. Yet, all he feels is that these ‘stars’ of her are looking down on him with a tender gaze.

To Xerxes, there are only two stars.

One almost died.

> **VIII.**

Glen’s fingers gloss over the pear white keys of the piano, the room silent save for the gentle rise and fall of his inhuman chest. In the mellow darkness, a crisp note cracks through the air like a whip, and he begins to play. His music is quiet, the same few chords drifting in repetitive silence as the moon pours in through the room’s large, glass window. Darkness was being rewritten, molded and bended to his will as he creates his own, sorrowful music. 

A voice would begin to sing with him; a woman’s. She created just as beautiful music, and they used to color the blank music sheets with score upon score of lines, staffs, notes. His chest aches. His music aches, it bleeds out onto the keys and begins to breathe it’s last, rasping breaths on the floor when his forehead touches the rich black piano top. 

It’s cold in here. His heart is cold, and his music has begun to die the longer it carries out; by the time it’s taken its last breath, an unnatural chord rings through the room as tears trickle down a sullen face to kiss his hands. It’s a starry night here, too; they shine down on the room from the outside, and they are occasionally blotched out by the harsh black clouds drifting overhead. 

He’s died, on the inside; and so has his music. 

He misses Lacie. 

> **IX.**

Vincent had fallen asleep, his cheeks as pale as the dim and silver light stretching down from the heavens. His body feels like a Popsicle, and he can see both of their breaths coming up in wisps in the night air. Tangled, seaweed like hair shifts as the boy gazes up at the glistening stars above. They shimmer, unlike the people who pass them each day; they carry life, and compassion, and embrace the two children as lost orphans rather than outcasts. Gilbert likes the night time.

It’s when everything’s quiet, and the voices of the public have been clamped shut under a lid of courtesy for the sleepers. It’s when the moon comes out and makes the world appear to be all one monotonous creation of God. It does not judge. It will not judge these children of sin and horrible creation. 

The raven head sits in silence, gazing up at those stars with his hands clasped together. Over and over again, he’s debating running away, on turning and running as far away as possible from this burden of his. A burden he dares to call his own brother. A man might take pity on him, give him food, even a home or an orphanage to be sent to. Anything could happen for the better, without his brother. 

Or for worse. How dare he hate his brother, his own flesh and blood! He hates the boy, yet loves him because of that flesh and blood tying him down. 

Gilbert breathes in the ice cold air, his body shivering when he feels warmth enter his fingertips. It spreads, and soon begins to flicker into his vision. Pure, warm, and glittering golden lights flickered around the children, and they whisper to him in the darkness. Home, home, home. It causes his heart to race and his body to be filled with such friendly warmth that he feels—just for a moment—like he was truly alive. 

"Vincent! Vincent! Wake up!" he cries, the stars echoing his plea to awaken the boy, "Look, look! Golden lights!" 

> **III.**

Clear skies, the sky a velvet black with it’s gems on display for the blond to pick and chose. He gazes in silent wonder, his worries having begun to dwindle and fade to nothing as he stares at the cosmos. Oz feels his troubles begin to quiet down within his chest and his head, and he finds it so much easier to breathe with Alice next to him. She breathes in every time he sighs, and she’s in a peaceful slumber. 

Everything’s in grays. For a moment, the world was the same; everything was so much simpler, and he found it so easy to move his head and his body that it was unearthly. He’s stepped into the world of the night, and departing from the bustling ‘life’ of the day. Alice looks so peaceful, her eyes closed and her cheek pressed against his back as she slept. Just like a child, a baby sleeping in her mother’s arms; so weak…exposed…and human, for a chain. 

It’s here he watches, and gazes back up at the stars. They’re quiet, yet omniscient, and he wonders if he can keep a secret with them for the night; a secret he has yet to find out even for himself. Those stars gaze down at him and whisper among themselves, watching as he lifts the sleeping girl onto his back and carries her out of the room to bed. 

That boy is in love with her. 

He’s been in love with her for over a hundred years. He will not stop, nor will he ever stop, loving her. For that is just Oz, and that is the extent to their relationship—a plush toy, a girl in a tower, and a night full of stars. 

> **VI.**

A teenage boy gazes up at the night sky, delivering papers to the city dwellers. It’s a crystal clear night, and for miles on end, he sees nothing but stars. Snow crunches under the soles of his feet, and he moves like a ghost through the night—through this life. It was the same way that day too, 75 years ago. 

Jack remembers her smile, how she laughed and held his hand so tightly it nearly cut off the circulation. Lacie was  _free_ ; from being a child of misfortune, a Baskerville, a sin to this earth. So free that it made him want to laugh and made him want to cry for her. It had taken 75 years of remembering to realize how sad the look in her eye was. The boy grits his teeth, and keeps going down the street; bike with papers in one hand, pocket watch in the other. 

Three lifetimes, and he’s watched the chess pieces on the board get sorted around and replaced with new ones. New generations, new lives to rule and dictate the world around them, and Jack has grown up with three of them. He does not know how long this’ll last, and he wonders if it’ll last as long as the stars will continue to shine down on the earth. 

It looks like they’re going to sprinkle down, now that he thinks about it. Like little rain droplets, ready to pour down and scatter the world with a million dreams and wishes come true. Silently, he prays. 

_I wish she’ll come back to me._

> **I.**

It’s a starry night when Elliot dies. 

As Leo’s escorted out of the building, a hand on each of his shoulders, he gazes up at the sky. Those stars used to sparkle with such life to them, one that he always used to like to watch when his face wasn’t buried in a book—hidden from the world. Elliot claimed that he likes the pictures they make in the sky. 

All Leo sees are hollow, golden lights. 

> **IV.**

While he didn’t normally sneak out of the orphanage…tonight was a special occasional. Elliot was the one who saw them through the window, his voice filled with excitement and awe. “Look at the stars, Leo!” he exclaims, pointing at the galaxy painted skies outside, “They’re incredible!” That’s when it strikes Leo, and he finds himself actually taking time out of his day to drag a noble up the steep staircases of the orphanage. “O-Oi, Leo, where are we goin—” 

"—the roof." Leo shoots him a grin, and finally makes his way into the storage attic. Wordlessly, he slips between the dust covered boxes and rations before finding the hatch to the roof. With a quick flick of the wrist, he opens it up, extending it out into the star filled world that lay outside. "This is the best seat we can get." the orphan remarks, slipping out onto the roof with ease as he extends his hand towards Elliot. "C’mon, don’t slip, it’s a little steep at first." 

A look of surprise slips over the boy’s face, before he takes a hold of the slimmer and more boney hand. With ease, the two boys finally make their way onto the star littered roof, watching the sky before them unfold with beautiful specks of light. Leo does not see the golden lights, but rather, the lights of the stars, and realizes something. 

Elliot’s hand was warm.

And he wasn’t letting go either. 

> **VII.**

Summer. Glen—or, Levi, as one might say, hates summer. 

Though, this is the last summer he’ll have to stomach. It’s too warm, and he wants to shed a layer or two when the thought stops him; who knows if he’ll only be taking off clothing layers. 

Death was cold. It soothed his aching bones and withered soul and rotting husk of a body. While he knows he will not ‘die’, like most humans, he feels his physical form begin to die as he is reborn in the soul of Glen. Reborn and trapped in a man’s consciousness for eternity, Glen after Glen after Glen. 

He looks up at the stars. There are as many stars as there are Glens, and he wonders if a new star will form when he’s passed.

_How fucking cliché,_  he thinks. 

Even he must admit, the stars are beautiful, with all those lights and all those memories it must hold dear to its heart. 

  



End file.
